Receive SMS online with a temporary phone number
Pick a temporary United States or Canadian phone number, open its inbox, and receive the verification code right in your browser. No SIM, no signup, no real number.
These are public free numbers — anyone using these phone numbers can see the incoming SMS messages. Use them for one-time verification and testing, never for accounts that hold personal data or payments.
Available countries
View all countries →
SMS activity right now: 3 numbers receiving across the United States and Canada. Open a country to see which of them took a message in the last few hours.
What this site is
Temp Phone is a free way to receive SMS online. You choose a temporary phone number from the United States or Canada, open its inbox online, and receive whatever messages arrive — verification codes, one-time passwords, sign-up links. Nothing is installed, it all happens online, and no account is needed.
It works well when you want to keep your own phone number private: registering on a new app, testing your own SMS flow, or getting a country-specific code without buying a local SIM. Because the numbers are public, they suit quick, low-stakes verification rather than anything you plan to keep long term.
Every SMS you receive is shown in full: who sent it, when it arrived, and the body of the SMS with the verification code inside. You do not refresh anything and you do not wait for an app notification — the SMS is already on the page when you open the inbox. If the SMS you expected is missing, the sender often holds the SMS for a minute or two, so give it a moment before you try again.
Everything on this page is free: the free phone number you pick from the list, the inbox it opens, and the code you copy out of it. There is no free tier that runs out and no paid unlock to open the inbox online — the numbers stay free because they are public. If you would rather not share, you can rent a number that only you can read.
New numbers are added regularly. If a code does not arrive on one, the fix is usually to use another free number and request the SMS again.
Why people use a temporary number
Four reasons this beats handing out your real phone number.
United States and Canada
Working United States and Canadian phone numbers, free to use, chosen by country, United States or Canada, in one tap.
No signup
Open a free phone number and receive its SMS online — no account, no email.
No subscription, no top-up
Reading an SMS here costs nothing: no balance to top up, no in-app purchase that unlocks the inbox.
Keeps your SIM out of it
Verify a service without exposing your personal phone number to it.
How to receive an SMS code
Three steps to use a temporary number, about a minute end to end.
Select a country
Open the United States or Canada and see which numbers are online right now.
Choose a number
Pick one of the numbers and use it on the service you are verifying, then request the SMS code.
Receive the SMS
The SMS lands in the number's inbox on this page — receive it, copy the verification code and finish sign-up.
Built for developers, testers and privacy-minded users
Testing and development
Check your own SMS and OTP flow against real United States and Canadian numbers without wiring up a paid gateway.
Privacy
Sign up for a service with a temporary one and keep your real phone number off its database.
Quick verification
Receive a one-time SMS code online when you need to verify just once.
Active and inactive numbers
Each of the numbers in the list is either active or inactive. An active number is online and will take an SMS for verification right now — that is the one to use. Inactive numbers stay on the site so you can still access their message history, but they have stopped receiving, so a free number that has gone inactive will never deliver your verification code.
Numbers move between the two states on their own: a temporary one that is busy today can be inactive tomorrow and come back later. That is why the list changes through the day, and why it is worth reloading the country page before you use one rather than reusing one you saved last week.
What a shared phone number will not do
These are receive-only numbers, built for catching one SMS. You cannot send an SMS from them, you cannot reply to one, and a voice call will not come through. Anything that depends on keeping the same one — two-factor login, account recovery, a courier calling you back — needs your own phone instead.
The second limit is time. If a service sends a follow-up SMS next week, that SMS arrives in an inbox other people can open, and it may have moved out of rotation by then. Receive the verification code, finish what you started, and treat it as spent.
The third limit belongs to the sender. WhatsApp, Telegram and most banks check a phone number before they send an SMS at all, so you never receive the SMS here and no error explains why. That is a property of the phone number type, not a fault of the inbox — when a sign-up keeps failing, rent a private one only you can read and receive the code on that instead.
None of that makes a free number a bad fit for what you use it for: catching a one-off verification code. It only means that is where the job ends, not where an account starts.